Where Easdale differs is in how its character has also been strongly shaped by the effects of non-travel – that period of abandonment from 1850 onwards where its natural capital was exhausted. Or rather, no longer considered worth going to the lengths required to exploit it. Time is an important component here too. In terms of geological time this period barely registers. Indeed, the island continued to travel through time and space towards a future we can never hope to know, possibly some form of new supercontinent. In human time, this period is conceived as one of abandonment, a state of inactive being. Between these two temporal conditions I propose exists a third: landscape time. To define this more precisely, a state of being during which the actions of humans become subordinate to natural or landscape processes. Changes that happen over landscape time occur more rapidly than in geological time. Their effects may be perceived by humans, though the rate of change is unlikely to make these experienced. The actions of even the most enlightened civilisations have historically been concerned with human time – addressing their peoples’ immediate challenges and needs. One corner of societies that tend to have proven the exception to this rule are families of generational wealth – families such as the Breadalbane Campbells who established a pinetum and an arboretum at their Taymouth Castle estate expressly for the pleasure of their future descendants. The effects of landscape time are anticipated in Joseph Gandy’s A Bird’s-eye view of the Bank of England (1830) which depicts John Soane’s masterwork in a partial state ambiguous enough to be read as though a ruin that is gradually becoming reclaimed by nature. Such a reading – of incidental rather than planned change in landscape time - resonates strongly with how Easdale is encountered today: the cessation of human activity having been of sufficient duration to create a post- industrial landscape with similar quasi-arcadian qualities. A place where the scars of the past have been softened by nature and where new possibilities are taking root. A place in which one form of natural capital has been replaced by another. Many sites around the world are stripping or have exhausted their local resources. Easdale invites us to consider the possibility that strategies such as managed decline or actively fallow (however paradoxical this may sound) may yet prove a productive way of engaging these places as they move from site of travel to nontravel, providing we can adjust our mindset from human time to landscape time. £
Tim Ingleby
Landscape time: four wheels good, two wheels better
links of interest:
William Smith’s Map https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/first-geological- map-of-britain.html Later Geological Map of British Isles https://picryl.com/media/geological-map-of-the- british-islands-d9036c Joseph Gandy’s Painting https://collections.soane.org/object-p267 For more on Easdale and The Slate Islands https://slateislands.org.uk https://canmore.org.uk/site/22614/easdale-slate- quarries
https://www.easdalemuseum.org/ https://www.stoneskimming.com/
TIM INGLEBY is a registered architect and an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Northumbria University. He is interested in how things are made, what they are made of, and why we should care about such.
39 on site review 46 :: travel
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